A dream of feathers
by Tichfield
Summary: The owl still cares for Sarah. A dark romance.
1. Chapter 1

**A dream of feathers**

by Tichfield

for R and her mention of lacking romance

* * *

Labyrinth and all associated characters are the property of the Jim Henson Company, and not mine.

* * *

**Chapter 1**

No more my little song comes back;  
And now of nights I lay  
My head on down, to watch the black  
And wait the unfailing gray.

-Dorothy Parker

The owl outside my window brings me words. Each day, a new one. Tuesday he fetched 'panoply'. Thursday was 'salacious'.

No one knows but me.

He'll come up to the glass and flutter - the ledge is much too narrow. He'll lock my eyes with his, those crystal moons, and in them I will see his simple message.

Simple, but so beautiful... the words he grants, they make me think of things. Of halls not painted white, of beds I make myself and worlds without the constant stream of nurses. Worlds where others see what I see.

I don't know how to tell him this. I do my best. I write new poems each night, but when I read them in the morning I am always disappointed. The gifts I'd made for him, the lines and verses, turn to scratches.

I can't understand them.

He comes to me before the morning rounds, when night has only just retreated from its battle with the dawn.

Should I sing to him? There's something musical about his movement. Rhythm in his wings, a tempo in the cocking of his head this way and that suggesting there's a song to find. If only I knew where to look.

I should, I really should... but I am frightened. If the nurses hear me, they may bar the window, or worse yet remove me to an inner ward.

There are many different types of white. Some are hostile, like the walls around me. Others, like in teeth, are friendly when not dangerous. There's white of snow, of childhood memories. A white of purity, the white of shrouds.

His white is that of open canvas. Of excitement. Promises, potential, a way to bring what one imagines to true life. That's what a painting is, isn't it? You take the pictures in your head and put them onto paper, and then if you're good enough the others will look at it and say 'oh, yes, very nice' and appreciate it and not never ever call it yet another fancy and insist you see the doctor...

I'm not that good a painter. I was always best at acting.

That, I hope, will bring me out of here. If I act as they wish me to, pretend to be of Them and Their world.

I could do it, too. I know I could.

But then, how would he find me?

I could leave a trail of peppercorns...

Too risky. I don't want to lose him.

I don't think he wants to lose me, either. His talons scratch against the window, flexing open then together, as if he wants to grab me. To hold me. To have me, as he has his mice.

What would he do, if it were open?

* * *

He brought me food. 

A mouse.

I think it's food.

I found it on the ledge. He cooed all dawning from a branch beyond my vision.

He wanted me to find it.

It's a mouse. A dead one. Slashed across the gut.

I don't know what to do with it. I hold it by the tail, swinging it back and forth, back and... and...

It's mesmerizing.

Still, I'd rather have a word. And I'm not hungry.

I hope the nurses find the mouse, and scream and run away. Then maybe I can fetch Sir Didymus from where they've hidden him. He must be lonely, in that locker.

Every day the nurses tread the self-same pass. Their feet have traced their prints into the floor, though I don't think they notice this.

It's subtle; just a slight impression... but I've walked where tiny steps astray would lead you to eternal stench. I look for tiny things, for difference.

I leave the mouse upon their path.

I know he disapproves. The owl, I mean. He ruffles all his feathers, making himself out to twice his size, and hoots. He's angry.

I am not. And I look forward to the early day, when first the white-hats come on rounds.

* * *

The doctors asked me many things. About the nurse who slipped; whether I liked her. 

I liked her well enough, I said. Did I like mice? they asked.

No, mice are much too soft and smell of attics, I replied.

They frowned at this. Do you catch mice? they asked.

I'm not a cat, I said.

You claimed to be one just the other month, they answered.

They've got me there.

The owl had brought me 'predatory', and that night I dreamed of cats. It was a vivid dream, in Egypt. I saw Ludo. He enjoyed himself. The pyramids were friends of his.

On waking, I could feel the fur I'd worn, the tail I'd curled around papyrus.

It was a natural mistake; I told the doctors this, and they agreed, but still they brought me more blue pills.

* * *

He brings a word. "Exasperated." 

His eyes are rimmed with red, his poses not as confident as is their wont, and I can see within his feathers just the subtlest hint of age.

My gaze outstays his visit. I look into the dawning light and think of castles ringed by walls.

There's something I'm forgetting. Something that I should remember, though the doctors think it ill.

I'm tired, oh so tired.

For lunch, there's lemonade.

* * *

Another mouse. This one is tied with ribbon. 

Where an owl finds a ribbon, I don't know - except it's white, and satin.

I take the ribbon for my hair and put the mouse into the toilet tank.

I wouldn't wear the ribbon right away, of course. I need excuses. So I wait until the mail, and I pretend that Toby sent a ribbon with his drawing.

The nurses think the drawing's of a church and congregation. So I tell them.

They are wrong.

The figures are not crouched; they're goblins - and the gothic architecture's really made of stairs that wander every way, and beautiful lost men who wander on them upside-down and wear a cape of feathers.

He knows, and he remembers.

Another dawn. The owl comes early, bearing something heavy in his claws.

* * *

He lays it on the tiny ledge and hovers, stable as he may, within my sight. 

No waiting in the tree this time, no distant coaxing. He's impatient, and he's angry, and he wishes that I take his gift.

I understand this, though I lack the language of the birds.

He has outdone himself.

A china dish, a mouse without its skin, its muscle cooked to vibrant redness - and there's something in its mouth. I dare to open up the window, slightly, so that I may take a peek...

A slice of peach. The whole dish smells of it.

Delightful. Of a sudden, I am hungry.

The owl maneuvers, awkwardly, and tries to touch my nose. He fails. I quickly bring my head into the room and snatch the dish, then latch the window shut.

It wouldn't do to have him here.

I don't know why, but I am certain there is danger in his beauty.

He hoots, frustrated, and I'm scared the nurses will take notice.

Two mice, by chance, are savaged by a cat. That is explained.

A mouse that's skinned and cooked and dressed, presented filled with peaches on a fancy dish? This not.

I raise it to my lips and take a bite of tender flesh, surprising in its melting on my tongue... and in its taste.

Peaches, yes, but also soapy bubbles, and there's something extra, something bitter that I half-remember.

I leave the dish beneath my bed and furtively retract a snack until there's nothing left but bones and porcelain.

I hide these in my pillow.

That night, I sleep more deeply than I have in years... and oh, the dreams.

* * *

Everything is blue. I lift my fingers and I find them half transparent, glowing a cerulean hue I'd only seen before in sapphires. 

I see my hair, out of the corner of an eye. A stray lock blows toward the window - there's no sense in that. Behind me is a door, beyond a hallway, all inside the institution. There is no chance of wind or breeze... yet there it is; I see it plain in darkness as in daylight.

I stand. The floor is cold. My patter echoes and I am afraid that I'll be heard.

Then I remember that I dream and I walk forward, unafraid.

The only other sound's a tapping at the window. Beak on glass. I have my guess as to the source,

A curtain shields the window. I try to push it back, but where I touch the cloth dissolves to cob-webs. Through the gap I see his eye.

It looks at me, unflinching.

I tear through the rest of the curtain, but no matter how quickly I work there's always more fabric, always more obstruction to my view of my...

...my?

Of him. Of his own self. His arrogant pose and way of making worlds from single words and what would a feather, just one of his feathers feel like on skin, on a cheek?

The curtain melts and falls about my feet in a tangle of fur and cotton candy.

He's there at the window. All of him. An owl and a man, behind a pane of glass. His wings are outstretched, and one of them holds up the moon.

His talons find a fragile purchase on the shallow ledge. Some trick of the eye, some combination of those claws and the scenery behind them, makes it look like he wears boots.

But what would an owl want with boots?

His chest is pressed against the window, flattened. Its feathers are of different colours. Their distortion, how they're pressed, somehow clarifies their message. Dark on light, a twisting, jagged script that spells a word: "rapture".

His beaks open and closes, but I hear no sound.

I made him. I remember that. I shaped him.

And I know I want to know this form, that I must know it.

I press my fingers to his wing, and fancy I can feel it through the glass.

There's rain, outside. I had not noticed. Lightning flashes; that is what reveals the patterns in the water - framing his round face, streaming and streaking into patterns suggestive of...

Another soundless cry. I press my ear against the pane and hope to catch his meaning.

What he shouts, I do not know, but through the glass I hear a whispered "Within".

I lift my head, remove my hand, and shake a prompt negation. This thing I cannot grant.

His wingbeats grow furious now. The window-frame shakes, and I fear it might buckle. What will the nurses think?

I move back toward the bed, but trip as my feet snag on the remains of the curtain.

As I sit on the ground he breaks through. A crystal crash, a yell triumphant and his beak is in the room. He's made a small hole in the window, and scattered shards across the floor.

He struggles, looking for purchase, for food, for something to bring him into the room from the world without... but he is wet, and we couldn't have that, could we?

That'd be ever so improper.

Still, it tugs at me, to see him hungry, see him reaching eagerly into the air, his tongue darting and searching for something to taste, for anything.

I have a lot of things. Most of them bitter, some of them not. There's soap, and pills, and biscuits.

I know, from inside, that none of these would fill him.

He brought the mice. He caught the mice. But did he eat the mice? There's still the one in the bathroom tank, unless it's since dissolved.

His motion grows more frantic. What for now is a small fracture may grow larger, and I know he'll bring the lightning. There are always sparks, where e'er he walks. Or is that sparkle? And does he ever walk, these days?

I lift myself from where I fell and clutch a thread of tattered curtain to my breast, as once I held my teddy bear. (They took him from me, in adjustment's name.)

I draw my face as near to his beak as I dare. Its snaps at me. I flinch, despite myself.

"Behave," I say. He calms a bit.

His breath is heavy, warm and smells of rotten peaches, flesh and stone.

I inhale. Though foul, the scent is precious, for it's natural and decadent and most importantly unclean. They polish every surface in my room with bleach. He'd never be allowed.

Something in my stomach turns and wakes. I stumble slightly. It is not unpleasant, not exactly.

Something's moving in my gut. Turning, kicking, making known that it wants out.

I don't know what to do.

I plan to ask my owl, but then I see his eyes and I am frozen. He is waiting. There is something that he knows that I do not, and he is waiting.

The man in the moon wears eye-shadow, and smirks.

A lance of pain in my esophagus, and then another, slightly higher.

It's the mouse. The mouse that earlier I ate, now answering the call of its master and re-shaper.

There's triumph in the owl's face; his frame of lighter feathers never looked more like a halo.

I want to protest, to deny, to exert my power over that I have ingested - but I cannot. The mouse chokes me with his climbing, with his progress.

I'm thankful for small blessings: his furlessness, and how I scorned two earlier offerings.

At last he's in my mouth. I want to bite, I should, but can't. He fills it all, with no room left for utterings or curses. His paws upon my tongue, his nose upon my uvula. Such a funny word, isn't it? And seldom used. And yet I cannot laugh, nor wish to...

His tail escapes my lips, and beckons to the owl king's beak.

A victory. He screeches - this, I hear - then closes firmly on the tail. He pulls and yanks me forward, 'til my mouth is flat against the opening and I feel rain upon my lips.

His world.

He steals a kiss and flies away.

The mouse dissolves inside my mouth, back to the boneless mash of acid muscle that it'd been before his magic brought renewal.

The rain is cold. It tastes of life.

And then I wake.

* * *

End Chapter 1

* * *

Author's Note: 

This will only have two chapters, and is very much a work in progress. When I upload the conclusion (later this weekend), I'm also likely to substantially revise the first chapter.

Description is my weakness - I'm not a very visual thinker, so I often forget to put it in altogether. If any reader cares to point out places where I could add descriptive text to good purpose, I'd be much obliged.

Also? There are far too many compromising owl videos on YouTube.

-T.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Ghosts of all my lovely sins,  
who attend too well my pillow

-Dorothy Parker

He wasn't there.

I woke in the morning, and he wasn't there and they FOUND me looking out the window, leaning close with sticky hands against the glass and breath a foggy circle.

"Do you wait for him?" they asked.

It's a test, a trick. I know the answer.

"No," I said. "I saw a cloud."

"What did the cloud look like, Sarah? Like an owl?"

"No. Just a cloud.And then I saw the sun shine off of it, and thought it was a plane."

"A plane."

"Yes," I lied. "I wanted to see if it was a biplane."

"There are no biplanes any more, Sarah."

"No. I guess there aren't."

They sent me soup for lunch. Tomato, garnished with a sprig of parsley. And other things, as I well know. Things that make me sleepy. Things that stop the dreams.

I will not have that; not tonight.

I need him. He must know I need him. He has eyes and goblins everywhere, though I can't see them.

He will come, I'm sure of it, and I must be awake. He will come with bubbles, lace and leather, and his eyes will lock on mine.

So hungry.

Fire in my belly. No; not fire. That's what it's called in the books I read, but it isn't really fire, is it? This hunger is like something just above my inner skin is trying to leave. Trying to rid itself of my body. To escape.

It twists and jerks and turns and that's what I feel - the pain as it struggles to remove itself from the clumsy, gooey flesh.

Where would it go, if if left? Somewhere better. Somewhere that you do not smell yourself each morning, where instead you wake to scents of peach and velvet. Somewhere that a touch upon your arm is welcome, and when blood was drawn it brings not hissing but a softer sound...

Where would it go? Back to its source. Back to the world in which it was born, past a soapy membrane, through a maze of doublets far, impossibly, away.

And it would leave me here, in contemplation of a severed link to paradise.

So then I'll give it soup, maybe. Or touch it, pet it, soothe it. Trick it into pleasant traps that end in shudders and its death-rattle.

Don't mind the other pictures in my mind, little hunger. Look only on imagined gorging, luxury, and keep your eyes away from twisting, flashing, fleeting images.

There is a certain kind of bliss in death. However small.

I need my hungers live and well tonight, and so I place my hands behind my back and lie upon them, on the bed.

My head hits something sharp within the pillow.

I don't mind it; not until I think of what it is - the skeleton, the little gift.

The fluorescent lights are dim and green, although outside the sun shines brightly.

Nurse feet echo in the hall. They talk. I catch reverberated words. Name, pills, laughter. Nowhere near me. When they reach my ear, they've been distorted.

Good.

I peer. At the desk beyond my door, a man in white is concentrating on a novel with a cover much too flowery for him.

Carefully, I lift my pillow and remove the prize from where I left it.

There's an odour, though I cleaned it.

I hold the bones in a cupped hand.

The soup is on a moving table near my window.

I drop the bones inside, quickly but without a splash, and open the window - just a little. Just enough to let the smell and invitation meet the wind, and tempt an owl into a visit.

He will smell me on the breeze. Will smell my teeth and tongue, my blood from when I bit my lip - and that will draw him.

He will smell his gift, chewed on, mixed with all I am, and he will come.

He will smell my offering of milk and vine, tomato soup, and he will drink the bait.

The powders that were meant for me will go to him, instead.

The tiled floor is cold.

Once sedated, will he fall? If he sits, as an owl, at the edge of the table and sips...

I'd best leave a towel on the ground. Something warm for him to drop on. Something piled, for I may dream a vivid dream and not awake in time to help him before morning rounds.

I'll leave my blanket bunched below, and tell them I was warm. They only touch it once a week, and never before noon.

I hope he likes unsalted crackers. I think they were out of the other kind.

* * *

The day goes quickly. I look into the sun and think of ice cream, frozen lipstick and the lives of lizards on a stick. Every now and then, when sight goes white, I turn and focus on a dimmer subject. 

Nurses. Doctors. Floating clipboards. Busy ants. A Goblin King holds parsley in his glove.

Wait.

That's not right. Not here.

"You have no power..."

"Ah, but I do," says he, and runs a silk-soft frond along my jaw. "What of desire?" He lifts his hand. I follow the motion with hungry eyes. I drink each nuance as he brings the garnish to his nose and sniffs. "Do you deny it?"

"Your kingdom is vast," I repeat, and then stop. My lips are dry, but I do not want to lick them. Not in front of him. Not now.

He kisses the tip of his finger - a shushing, warning and caress in one. "The Goblin King's kingdom is vast," he corrects, "but I am here as a private man." He smiles and takes a step toward me, flicking aside the sprig of parsley. I think I should step back, but it takes more than a moment for the thought to translate into action. That wasted breath is all he needs to steal my wrist with his left hand.

"Let me go!"

"Be careful what you wish for, Sarah." Ignoring my struggles, he holds me closer and lowers his head so that our noses touch. "I may be inclined to grant it."

Jareth's eyes have falling leaves in them, in red and gold.

"Let m-" A hand claps over my mouth.

* * *

The room returns, and with it the mundane. A nurse is at the bedside, taking my blood pressure. 

My blanket, I am glad to see, is on the floor and undisturbed. Parsley floats atop the soup, untouched.

"Did I sleep?" I ask.

"All afternoon," the reply. "Are you hungry?"

Hungry. Not sleepy. This is telling, and I nod.

"Good," she says. "We saved your soup for you. Sweet dreams."

I hear an owl's hunting cry, then smile and sink into my pillow-case.

Sweet dreams?

They will be.

* * *

End Chapter 2


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Don't you want to push me parsley?  
Looks to me, dear  
Like you've got plenty there to push

-Sondheim

I wake to moonlight and a thump.

Moments pass, and sharpened shadows cross the silver coin. Roaches on the window?

Rustling.

That's enough. A swing from the wrong side - I do not wish to crush his highness, and tonight I'm not a bat. My ears will not alert me to his wing-positions.

Briefly, then, on tip-toe I make circuit of the bed. Upon the night-stand, ruddy claw-prints. Talons in tomato soup, and streaks that lead below.

The trail is true. Below me, in the gap between the wall and plastic shelving, something tries to burrow in the blanket that I left.

Something white. Something feathered. Something feeble and unused to weakness.

I crouch and reach my hand toward the trembling mound. It's fabric that I touch.

One touch, and out he slides.

Large eyes that will not look at me, joints that do not heed their owner's will.

He opens his beak, the cute widdle barn owl, and sneezes.

I did not dream of him this way.

Well, maybe once, for which I blame a book of myths, and Leda.

I grew out of it.

I grew in wanting, yearned for other things not swan nor owl may provide in safety and decorum.

I will have them. He will grow.

My fingers meet his tiny chest. Fine, the feathering is here, and warm. His heart beats faster than I had expected.

He cannot struggle. Not sedated.

He is mine, and I will shape him.

Patty-cake, patty-cake, knead the dough... his frame, this shape, is like a sculpture in wet clay. With pressure properly applied, it's possible to change its shape.

With three fingers of each hand I press unwanted feathers into his lungs, careful with my thumbs to keep his fragile heart from harm. Each time a quill melts back into his flesh, he squeaks and skips a beat.

Such an odd thing for a king to do - to squeak.

All the reason to return him to his proper shape.

I press, and melt, and soon his chest resembles... haggis, if it really comes down to it. He looks like a medium haggis before cooking, to which someone has stapled wings and talons and a head with eyes that try to open but cannot.

There's smoothness here, at least - smoothness, in too small a space.

How shall I change this veined and slickened lump into a proper chest?

I press my palm upon its surface, then I tug. Experimentally, with caution.

Resistance, and a quicker heartbeat on his part. Moonbeams strike him, showing sweat. I reach for them, and find they sink into his being. Nothing's being wasted. Not while he is in my hands, and yet unsure of what my purpose is.

To think that once he wanted to be mine. Only mine, and utterly.

Now that he sees, now that he feels what this implies... perhaps he regrets what he offered.

Nothing fills the nearby air save breaths and beats, and in the background, too far off, computers and nurse footsteps.

Another tug. More resolute.

He yields.

The flesh pours out in waves and folds. I yelp at first, but then remember where I am and shift to silence.

Easy, it is not.

It looks as if I'd turned the tap, filled a tub with his pectoral.

Muscle crumpled on itself like soft-serve.

I've not eaten in too long a time.

He's in pain. It's taking far too much to keep his wings pinned down, even when I place my knees upon them and use all my weight for leverage.

His talons scratch me, weakly, on my inner thighs.

I don't mind. I'm in a hospital, why should I fear infection?

His beak snaps and opens, snaps and opens, reaching up toward my face.

Not a kiss he wants, this time.

I take the other side, the un-inflated one, into my hands and draw it out. Almost like pasta, or like making pizza crust.

Soon his chest and belly are expanded, coiled. So near, so almost very nearly there...

...but he is empty; I've not baked the dough, not let it rise.

What shall I use for yeast?

The scratches stopped a while ago. He lacks the energy. His lungs appear to tremble, and his little heart is insufficient to the task of keeping up his new physiognomy.

No more a haggis, but an inflatable mattress with all the air drawn out, and little lumps where full-sized organs should have been.

"Shall I blow in you?" I ask him, and his head turns. Just a little. Heavy breathing, fluttering eyelids. "I don't know how to fill you up."

No answer but a creak that is his present scream.

So much was planned, so much is wasted. I'd pictured myself draped in him, in vivid dreams.

And now I had the chance to wear him like a mantle. Chest and waist and just below, all turned into a flattened sheet of pulsing leather. Arms and fingers, hands I thought would brush my hair and trace my lips, are now small wings. Ornaments. I could put one behind each ear, if I should wear him as a cloak, his owl's head atop my own, a hood and...

...and...

There's something there, that image. Someone else. A story lost. A feathered hat that spoke the truth and begged for coin...

No matter.

He's brought me food, now he may bring me clothes and be my cloak.

It's so much easier to finish tasks when you have ends in mind.

Not that I think that this will be his end.

He'll find a way. In dreams, or out.

I stand and drag him to the middle of the room. The little square of light within my door's unbroken. Good. If it were split in two, then that would mean a sentry on the other side. Someone to watch.

We are alone, the king and I. Alone save for the moon, and roaches, and abundant floor where I have leave to spread him out and flatten him.

I knead and roll and press until from widdle owl he's turned to towel. Big ones, at the beach.

His wings, his claws, I've left untouched. One at each corner. There is nothing he can do to me, when they are so spread out.

His neck is in the middle of the upper towel's edge.

Well, nearly middle. I may perhaps just slightly have misjudged that.

Not on purpose.

I did ask him.

He was silent on the matter, though he dared a glare.

The sedatives are weakening, I think.

The night is also waning. I should hurry, and I do.

Another glance, ensuring that all medical's at bay. They've hurt me for this sort of thing before, and cited laws and numbers.

No one, so I'm safe.

I lift my robe, remove it, and lie down upon him.

Like lying with myself, almost. The flesh that I was born with on the flesh I shaped and dreamed.

It wasn't meant to be like this. Not really.

First he tries to nip my scalp, but cannot reach, and he gives up.

Then I'm cold, and have to wrap him 'round my front. This does not work well; he's not quite the width I need. I pin his wings to my shoulder-blades and hold them in place with my thumbs and fore-fingers.

He warms, in time, but it's not warmth enough.

No doubt his blood has trouble circulating.

He shivers. Constantly. It's not unpleasant, but I think he's scared.

I should tell a story. Stories always bring me safety.

Save the ones that don't.

What tale to tell the owl that has become a towel?

I've decided.


End file.
